The Motif

Chapter 3

Rachel still couldn't believe what had happened. It had now been three days since Kimmi and Ben were murdered. Jennifer had arrived, and relieved Rachel of some of her responsibility with helping Mr. and Mrs. Carter cope. The funeral service was set for the coming weekend. And yet, it still seemed too unbelievable to be real. It had to be some nightmare. It had to be.

The fact that she was the one who had discovered the crime scene did nothing to convince Rachel that it was real. In fact, the grisly scene was so extremely horrific that it had the opposite effect – such a vision could only be the result of a fevered sleeping hallucination. That was the stuff of Stephen King fiction, not real life.

But it was real. Rachel had held Kimmi as she died – after gracelessly shoving her murderer's also-dying body off, of course.

Her scream had caught the attention of those closest to the gymnasium exit, and within minutes others had come to investigate the source of the disturbance – but by then Kimmi and Derek were both already dead.

From there, the night quickly descended into utter chaos. It didn't take long for the rest of the dance to find out what happened, and for everything to be completely shut down. Within half an hour, the school parking lot became a zoo of flashing emergency lights, and frightened panicky parents trying to find out what happened and get to their children.

Rachel, being the first to find the crime scene, had been detained by the police for a few brief questions, before she and her parents were given the clear to go home. It almost goes without saying that the God of Sleep paid no visit to Rachel Anderson on that night.

Kimmi's parents were contacted by the police, and Mr. Carter – driven by sheer grief and stubbornness – drove he and his wife the two-hour drive from Boston, crying all the way, in the dead of the night.

The next morning, after a brief argument over the matter with her parents, Rachel insisted on going over and helping the Carters. While she wanted nothing more than to curl up into a piteous ball of grief, Rachel needed something to do, and she hoped maybe helping the Carters would keep her occupied. Also, she suspected that surrounding herself with the grief of Kimmi's parents would make her own grief seem childishly pale by comparison.

While Mr. and Mrs. Carter made painful phone calls to family, Rachel cleaned up the house. Rachel was grateful Kimmi's parents were too occupied with grief to notice the fondue pot on the living room table, or the votive candles and rose petals she was throwing away – all evidence of the monumental night that Kimmi had planned. Rachel knew they wouldn't care about any of that at this point, but still she didn't want to add any more issues than necessary to their grief.

After family and friends had been contacted, Rachel took over answering the phones for the rest of the day, screening calls so that Mr. and Mrs. Carter wouldn't have to deal with anyone that wasn't absolutely necessary for them to deal with.

But even after all of that, and having several days to let it all sink in, everything just seemed so unreal.

What made the whole situation even more unbelievable were the deaths of Brian and Carley earlier in the same week. The fact that within one week two students apparently had completely separate and unrelated mental breakdowns which caused them to brutally murder their fellow students before killing themselves was a coincidence that could not be overlooked.

Unfortunately, no one was able to figure out what connection there was between the attacks; aside from the fact that they went to the same school, there was no evidence anywhere that Derek and Carley had any significant interaction with each other.

When Jennifer had heard about Brian and Carley, she had gotten the 'puzzle look' in her eye – a look that Rachel had seen in her best friend's sister often over the years. When she was younger, Jennifer had always enjoyed a good puzzle, whether it was the Sunday crossword, a Rubik's Cube, or even a jigsaw (which is how Rachel came to privately refer to the look as Jennifer's 'puzzle look'). As she got older, the look evolved to cover when she'd be working on a story for the school newspaper or just about any challenge that presented itself. It meant the gears in her brain were working, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.